Tame Impala’s heavily anticipated follow up album ‘Currents‘ has been streamed early, before its expected 17th July release date.
And its already received a wave of approval from critics.
After
“conquering the solitary,” the album is a change in direction and stand apart for Tame Impala mastermind, singer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker, known for his melancholy tone and ‘lonerismness’ in
Innerspeaker and
Lonerism. Currents brings a new life to the Australian band, a set list of tracks that breaks away from the isolated and intimate listening experience to the delivery of a new energy, fit for “raves on a beach in India,” Parker told
NME.
“I wanted to make something that from the sound of it could be down at the club. I just realised that I’d never heard Tame Impala played somewhere with a dancefloor, or where people were dancing. Listening to it was very much kind of a headphone, solitary experience. Which is cool, but I’ve moved on from that. I’ve always loved listening to music on my own, but there’s another side of me that is just fascinated by… like Goa trance for example – just a rave on a beach in India, you know? Where there’s not an artist to be worshipped, just someone that’s spinning the music, and it’s just this free flowing continuous energy. It was a front that I wanted to conquer, because I had conquered the solitary.”
As hipsters everywhere became more and more drawn to Parkers mysterious ‘lonerism’ and withdrawal from society, Currents purposefully moves away from the natural response to stay in line with what listeners will expect from a psych-rock band and completely pushes the boundaries of genre. From the bass and synth driven “Yes I’m Changing” to the melodic pop hook of “‘Cause I’m a Man,” the band have strayed from the guitar and reverbed voice dominated sound heard from their first two albums, and their new album is a testimate to the bands capacity for musical experimentation and genre-fluidity.
Emerging from a home recording project and
Myspace account, Tame Impala came into the limelight after their critically acclaimed 2010 release of
Innerspeaker, their subsequent 2012 album
Lonerisms receiving a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. The follow up album
Currents has followed suit in success, however the ‘impala’ has taken sudden movement; untamed.
“It’s someone finding themselves in this world of chaos,” he told
NME. “At different times in life I’ve felt like it’s time to say goodbye from some form of myself that’s been hanging around for a while, you just feel this urge to move on, like a herd of antelope. They’re just standing there in a field eating grass for however long, and then all of a sudden they start moving. You feel like that as a person sometimes. Where it’s just time to move on.”
From the eight-minute disco funk of ‘Let It Happen’ opening the album to the closing track “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” the thread that weaves this album together is Parkers strive for change and self development.
The album features the band’s previously released singles “Let It Happen,” “‘Cause I’m a Man,” Disciples” and “Eventually.”
Here’s the full tracklist for Currents:
01. Let It happen
02. Nangs
03. The Moment
04. Yes I’m Changing
05. Eventually
06. Gossip
07. The Less I Know the Better
08. Past Life
09. Disciples
10. ‘Cause I’m A Man
11. Reality In Motion
12. Love/Paranoia
13. New Person, Same Old Mistakes
